If I watch it, I'll talk about it…

Menu

The Vampire Diaries Season 8 Episode 8: Finding Oneself

“We Have History Together” was a major throwback for me. The episode wasn’t an obvious throwback but it went back to the beginning in a lot of ways. Somehow this made it so real for me that it’s all coming to an end. I think I said this in my post on the season premiere but now it really does feel like the beginning of the end.

When Stefan and Elena first met it was the beginning of this journey we’ve been on for the last 8 years. Their little introduction birthed the title of this episode but at the time who would have thought that one sentence would carry so much weight. At the time when Elena said that they had history together she meant it literally, as in history class. However now that sentence means so much. They even made things more literal for us when Sybil took us back to Mystic Falls High, history class.

Caroline goes back to their old high school for a report with an alumna spin. To be honest I forgot that she had a real job.Anyway when she gets there she discovers that it was in fact all a ruse and that there was no story. Sybil just needed her there. you’re probably wondering why Sybil was even in the school. Well ladies and gentlemen, she wanted to give us a history lesson. However because Sybil is as extra as you can expect a Siren to be, she takes the students in the history class hostage, threatens to kill all of them if Caroline doesn’t comply and then takes them all on a school trip to a site where hundred of witches were burned to the stake some hundred years ago.

It turns out that Sybil was really just after a bell. I’m not going to lie, at this point I was very confused and just thinking to myself, ‘all this for a freaking bell?’ but alas, Vampire diaries always has some explanation. It wasn’t just any bell, oh no, it was much more than that. Remember the pitch fork? Well thanks to Dorian who by the way is now aware of the dangers in Mystic Falls, we learn that the fork is a third of the bell. Basically it’s a weapon. This isn’t all we learn. I’m not sure about you guys reading this but for so long my friends and I who watch the show have argued over Matt’s importance and I remember someone once saying ‘he’s not from a founding family. Who even is he?’ This episode we got just a little bit more. Matt Donovan may not have been from one of the founding families but that did not mean his family did not have a legacy. His father tells him about how the Maxwell family, their family used to be blacksmiths and they had a legacy, that was up until the founding families treated them like an embarrassment and in turn they became one. #PoorMatt. In the end, do they find the bell? No. Seline had beaten Sybil to the chase but at least we learned that Matt had a legacy.

Let’s move on to what I consider to be the real action. Stefan and Damon are still on their mission for Cade and things get very interesting. When we first see them they are in an AA meeting and they do the usual. Compel everyone in the room and then find out who the worst person is. Damon eventually settles on the leader of the meeting and by the time he’s done killing him, Stefan has killed every other person in the room. Okay first of all woah… Stefan chill. Naturally Damon is worried because you know… we don’t want the ripper to make an appearance. Stefan tells Damon not to worry and that this time he’s got it under control. If there is no drip, there is no temptation. What we end up seeing is Stefan wiping the puncture wounds of his victims to avoid ‘dripping’. Right…cause that plan is really going to work.

Anyway… remember how Cade asked Stefan to bring him the souls that had potential to do the most evil? He does exactly that in this episode. Stefan finds a doctor whose parents were killed by a drunk driver as a child, volunteers and is just a really nice person. To prove to Damon that she has potential to be very evil, he knocks Damon out with vervain, get’s him admitted into the hospital and manipulates the girl into killing Damon. She puts up quite the fight, I’m not going to lie, but eventually she gives in to the evil and ‘kills’ Damon. Okay at this point I think the writers just really love the idea of killing Damon, it comes in so many different shapes and forms. Alright back to the episode. By the end of the day, the doctor is confronted by Stefan and Damon and they pretty much kidnap her. Damon however is not keen on killing her and Stefan quickly realises that it’s because of his conscience and Elena’s necklace. In order to prove to Stefan that the necklace means nothing, Damon throws it out of the window as they drive away. Oh, and he ends up killing the doctor.

Two events happen in the final five minutes which gave this post its name. The brothers ‘find themselves’. I don’t mean that in the happy sense. Not exactly. The next day after Damon throws Elena’s necklace away, he goes back to the site to retrieve it. He knows exactly what it means to him and who he is. It’s a reminder. Once he’s got it back he heads back to the hospital and there he finds Stefan hunched over like an animal, surrounded by a sea of headless bodies, because oh guess what? The ripper is back. Surprise surprise.

I had mixed feelings about this episode. I enjoyed the scenes with the brothers a lot more than I did anything else going on in the episode. I’d be perfectly happy focusing on them for the rest of the time. That being said it was still a good episode and I’m looking forward to the rest.